


Stargazing

by sluttyeren



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-17 06:47:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1377802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sluttyeren/pseuds/sluttyeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wordless Armin drabble, he thinks about the stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stargazing

**Author's Note:**

> You would think a prompt as simple as eren/jean/armin stargazing would be cute and fun, right? Wrong. Everyone dies. This world is cruel.

Armin loved the stars. The vast sky above them was endless, stretching over the Earth endlessly and impossibly. In the dark the stars shone brilliantly, mysteriously. Sometimes he liked to just sit at the window and look out at them, or lay out on the ground and count them, until he lost track or counted the same one twice. His grandfather used to point stars out to him, talking about the way they were arranged in the sky and showing him things in the secret book he only shared with Armin. It made the sky- which was so ordinary, something they looked at everyday- something special. He never grew tired of it, tracing new shapes through the clouds during the day, committing every shade of blue and grey and black to memory. I he was ever bored, which wasn’t often, he would go off by himself and look at the sky, dreaming of the rest of the world, wondering if he looked up at it from outside the walls if it would look the same.  
  
When he lost his family it was a little different, and Armin found himself staring up at the sky with tears in his eyes instead. He wondered if there were gods out there, and if there were he asked them why this would happen. He couldn’t be alone now, he had Eren and Mikasa with him. Sometimes when they slept on the streets he would stay awake next to them, eyes always on the pitch black of the night sky and thinking. His mind was always working, sometimes he watched the light changing for hours before he let sleep take him.  
  
Then they joined the scouting legion. He was scared. His friends were strong, but Armin wasn’t cut out for this. He never had been, and living on the streets all those years only made it worse. They were all thinner and worse for wear, but Eren still had his scrappy enthusiasm and Mikasa still chased after him tirelessly. Armin followed them, simply because he wasn’t sure what else to do. He didn’t know what he would do without them in his life. And it did get easier. It took him longer, but he wasn’t quite the weak boy he had been. More often than not he could look at the stars now and remember with less pain looking up at the same sky with his grandfather. Things got much easier, and he remembered his promises to Eren, that they would see the world together.  
  
But things got easier before they got harder. He wasn’t weak anymore, but Armin wasn’t as strong as them, and he might never be. But he was intelligent. He had to make difficult decisions, and it was hard on him. There was a lot of pressure, and he felt that he had no room for error. Lives were on the line. He still stared at the sky now and then; it helped him stay calm. When he needed to clear his mind he would play the way he did as a child and look for shapes in the clouds.  
  
And lives were lost. There was really no way to avoid it, but it still wasn’t easy. He spent a lot of time thinking about them, laying on his back and looking up. He wondered again if there was anything else out there. Once Jean saw him out on the grass. He didn’t ask what he was doing, just lay beside him and held his hands. Sometimes the tears came back. He couldn’t be strong all the time. Jean helped. He made it easier. He didn’t have to go through it alone and he was grateful. They looked out for each other.  
  
Things got even harder. They had a plan, but there was too much they couldn’t account for. They had to rely on people they shouldn’t have had to rely on. Their own skill wasn’t enough. Armin was terrified for Eren. He wasn’t immortal, no matter what he was capable of. They had to draw the line somewhere. They tested the limits, pushing a little further each time. He bounced back, but Eren was still human. Armin always believed that. No matter what he had seen, and everything that had happened since, he knew Eren was very human.  
  
Everyone else knew it too, when he died. He couldn’t fight forever. Armin made sure he got his body back. Well, what was left of his body. That didn’t matter to him. It was Eren. He buried him himself. Jacket tossed aside and sleeves rolled up under the hot sun. He visited sometimes. Jean still held his hand, but he didn’t cry anymore. It was easier not to. He spent more time staring at maps, plans, proposals. His mind was muddy. The color of the sky didn’t comfort him as much as it used to. The pitch black of night held too many mysteries. Armin needed information, he needed plans. He couldn’t afford to deal with unknowns. The daylight seemed artificial now. It was so bright, and it reminded him of days where he had more hope. Days that he actually thought they would make it to the outside world together, when they were still able to laugh and point out the shapes of dogs in the clouds.  
  
Losing Jean was much harder on him. After losing Eren he clung to Jean tighter than before, needed a reminder that he was still alive and that he still had a job to do. Jean was there to help him, be the strong leader Armin couldn’t. He never realized how strong he was. Jean didn’t have a shoulder to cry on, Armin was too busy using his to offer his own. Without him Armin realized how heavily he relied on him, and just how much he had grown to love Jean with Eren gone. He buried him close to Eren, sat between their graves to watch the day fade into night. He couldn’t count how many nights he had done that, how many mornings he had skipped eating to sit there. He didn’t dream about the endless sky outside the walls, stopped wondering how it would look when he was far away from here, couldn’t bring himself to seek out the constellations he used to read about and think about whether or not he would be able to find them later.  
  
He wasn’t weak, but he had never been strong. Armin would never have ended his life on purpose, but he couldn’t be surprised when it did. He saw it coming, but he was too slow. He accepted his fate peacefully, walking to Death’s waiting arms without protest.  
  
He was buried between the two men that made up his life; his childhood friend and his lover. Now it was almost as though the three of them were sitting there on the grass again, hand in hand, staring up at the stars with Armin in the middle.


End file.
